Mr Paisley's paper army

Stewart Dalby

Belfast

1ster in some ways resembles a tele vision serial. It is possible to miss any number of individual episodes and yet pick up the narrative thread again very quickly. Various dramas may ebb and flow, but nothing fundamentally changes. This is because the final, the real, denouement, apocalyptic or otherwise, never actually seems in prospect.

This past fortnight, the majority Protestant community, or sections of it, was again involved in protest. For anyone who has watched events in Ulster over the past decade, the sense of déjà vu was overwhelming. Workers were again urged to strike, bellicose speeches were made about taking up arms to defend the Protestant heritage, and men and boys once more dusted off their second-hand combat jackets and balaclavas in order to go out on parade.

This is the third bout of concentrated Protestant action in ten years (there were other similar protests in 1974 and 1977), and the reasons for this one are broadly similar. A British Government is perceived to be trying to foster closer links between the six-county Ulster state and. the 26-county Irish one — and that Government's security forces are not doing all they might to defend the Protestants against their enemies, the Provisional IRA and the Irish National Liberation Army.

Protestant anger was augmented by the fact that the Provisional IRA have been killing more and more members of the Ulster Defence Regiment, and that anger grew at the murder of the Revd Robert Bradford, a Unionist MP at Westminster and the first MP to be so killed since the 'Troubles' recurred 13 years ago. But if the reasons for the Protestant uproar have a familiar ring, what might now follow this latest round of sectarian feeling could be in sharp contrast to the aftermath of 1974. What happens next in Ulster, or to be more precise what might not happen next, could set the course of events for a very long time. And the particular configuration of the two leading protagonists, Mrs Thatcher and Mr Paisley, who has styled himself the leader of Northern Ireland's people, suggests that the next few episodes might be more intriguing than usual.

If history never quite repeats itself, even in Ulster, it comes perilously close to doing so. When Asquith's Home Rule bill of 1911 looked like giving autonomy to the whole of Ireland, the Protestant leaders of the day, like Sir Edward Carson and Mr James Craig, mobilised a force, the Ulster Volunteer Force, of 100,000 men. They paraded, at first only with wooden guns but Craig's organisational skills ensured that the real things quickly became available. In 1920, when Home Rule again seemed likely, Lloyd George was dissuaded by the fact that officers in the British army in the Curragh had actually threatened to mutiny. This was the key factor which meant that, when the Anglo-Irish treaty of 1921 was signed, two Irish states — with separate parliaments in Dublin and Stormont — were set up. Whether the Ulster Volunteer Force of 1920 — what might now be called by the more fashionable name of a 'third force' — could have effected the same result remains hypothetical. Nevertheless, the notion emerged that the various strands of loyalism, by sinking their differences and showing a marked ability quickly to mobilise, could, by a combination of civil disobedience and armed readiness, successfully resist being pushed through the green door into the Catholic state by a British government or pulled through it by an Irish one.

In 1974, the Conservative government of Mr Heath set up a power-sharing executive comprised both of Unionists and, for the first time in the 60-year history of the state, some Catholics; it also envisaged a Council of Ireland, on which politicians from the Irish republic were to sit. This was too great a threat for some Unionists. In a concerted two-week campaign of strikes, the executive was forced to resign. The Unionist leaders backed the strikes by the Ulster Workers' Council — leaders who included, significantly, Mr Paisley and also the leaders of the main paramilitary groups like the UDA.

By the standards of 1974, this week's protest might ostensibly be seen as being equally successful. Mr Paisley had persuaded many industries to close down for the afternoon and he did manage to stage a parade in Newtowards where 6,000 men — many with masks — staged a quasimilitary rally. Significantly, though, Paisley did not succeed in persuading other Unionist leaders to combine with him. The Official Unionists staged their own protest. Half of Mr Paisley's speeches throughout the day consisted of bitter diatribes against other Unionists, notably Mr James Molyneaux, the Official Unionist leader. Most important of all, he did not manage to persuade the main paramilitary group, the Ulster Defence Association, to throw in its lot with him.

In fact the UDA — which is legal, although some of the other organisations which it shelters (like the Red Hand Commando and the Ulster Freedom Fighters) are not — has developed political ideas of its own recently. It favours an independent Northern Ireland. Mr John McMichael, the leader of its political wing, was lukewarm in his support of Mr Paisley. 'We've been down that road before,' he said of the planned protest, 'The time for marching is past. What is needed now is a positive attitude to the IRA.'

And although Mr Paisley's parade might seem dramatic street theatre when conveyed through television and press photographs, it looked pathetic at close quarters. Many of those on parade were old men or young boys. From where I stood, the marching sometimes bordered on the ludicrous; the marchers had to go over a pavement in order to get into the square. In the dark, with the snow coming down, at least 12 men tripped and stumbled. Eventually a man and woman stood by yelling, 'Mind the step! Mind the step!' It seemed more like Remembrance Sunday than the start of a sinister 'third force'.

This is not to say, however, that Mr Paisley's army does not contain a few fanatics, or that sectarian 'tit for tat' kill ings are not likely to happen. But as Andy Tyrie, the Supreme Commander of the UDA is reported as saying, 'You don't need 50,000 men parading around; what you do need are 200 men who know what they are doing'. And if 11,500 British troops, together with 7,500 Royal Ulster Constabulary, cannot defeat the IRA, it is very difficult to see how Mr Paisley's rag-tagand-bobtail force can.

Of course, the idea is probably that the 'third force' is not meant to fight anyone.

Certainly all the men went home after the parade, and presumably went to work the next day — those who had jobs, at least.

But Mr Paisley's plan is presumably to use these shows of quasi-military force in order to frighten Mrs Thatcher as she has frightened him. But, providing the Prime Minister keeps her nerve, he is in a very tight corner indeed and has little room for manoeuvre. He cannot render the province 'ungovernable' because his party controls only three of the 26 district councils — and, in any case, it has no funds and little power.

He cannot orchestrate prolonged industrial unrest or civil disobedience because he does not carry the other Unionists with him. Unless he can persuade the UDA and other paramilitary units to come in with him, he presumably cannot make good his threat to use a 'third force' to take on the IRA.

He could go the whole way and arm his volunteers, but that would take him into a shady area of illegality — and Mr Prior has declared that he will not countenance vigilantes. And so long as Mrs Thatcher does not try to hurry the pace of Anglo-Irish co operation, which seems unlikely, Mr Paisley will be without a meaningful target.

Of course it is always possible that Protestant anger could boil over if IRA outrages continue at their present high level. The balance of probabilities, however, is that Mrs Thatcher will keep the Protestant RUC in line, as well as the British generals, and face Mr Paisley down. That would be a denouement of a kind.